Is there a standard unit of measure for HCV-RNA quantitative assays?
David Bernstein MD: Quantitative HCV-RNA testing used in the United States and around the world is very important. There are many different types of assays that are used; most academic centers have their own assays and various companies have their own assays. Rajender Reddy MD: This has lead to a lot of confusion in the practicing community because of the variability in the number of copies reported by each of these assays. Therefore, there has been a push to standardize these assays so that they could all be reported in a value that is of practical relevance and comparable between the various assays. And these are now being reported increasingly as international units per mL. And this would allow to compare the various assays in terms of the amount of virus that a patient has at a given time point. David Bernstein MD: Therefore, a test in hospital A would be comparable to a test in hospital B, because you’re looking at international units in a way similar to INR testing is used for fo
